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Media as Mathematics - Calculating Justice 131

Kevelson argues for the direct and indirect resemblances of Peirce‘s ideas
in the tradition of legal realism generally, in authors like Karl Llewellyn and
Jerome Frank. By her own admission, Kevelson claims to be working within a
contemporary, transformed legal pragmatism, and claims a foundational and
philosophical status to her portrayal of a legal pragmatist tradition that
includes the legacy of mathematical and scientific method, going back to
Peirce. Jerome Frank borrowed themes of non-Euclidean geometry and spatial
reasoning, of aesthetic and visual analogies, in his own realist jurisprudence, to
account for the indeterminate nature of informal judicial behaviour. Karl
Llewellyn depicted legal reasoning as fundamentally kaleidoscopic and visual
in nature [Kevelson, 1988] [1990,213] [1998,pp 76,83]. Kevelson stresses a
visual methodology in empirical and realist philosophy generally,
commencing with the stress by the British philosopher Bentham on cenoscopic
and idioscopic methods, and scientific tools, of observation. As a main
initiator of symbolic interaction, John Dewey maintained qualities of inquiry,
aesthetics, and cultural tools in a version of communicative action quite
distinct from James, and arguably more in line with that of Peirce, his teacher.
William Twining stressed the conception of art/craft in realist understanding of
Law; Jerome Frank and Karl Llewellyn that of a geometric and kaleidoscopic
conception of reasoning [Kevelson, 1990].
Rather than attempting to comprehend the full oeuvre of either Peirce or
Kevelson, this chapter will now selectively and respectively introduce and
employ their ideas as part of a commentary on a case study in mathematics-in-
law, by the researcher Fred Kort.

“LETTERS OF ALGEBRA” – FRED KORT AND THE
CALCULATION OF JUSTICE

Fred Kort was one of a number of scholars in the decades following
World War II involved in research into the prediction and review of decision
making and professional behaviour by officials of the American justice
system, particularly the higher and Supreme courts. Despite the focus of his
research and its limited audience, interpretation of an early paper, such as
―Predicting Supreme Court Decisions Mathematically: A Quantitative
Analysis of the ―Right to Counsel‖ Cases‖ [1957], can be seen to involve
perspectives about the meaning and use of mathematical and quantitative
methods in social domains; informal and formal inference; the language of law